The questions I’d ask are: if Palace had scored the goals and picked up the points they really should have based on general performance and were sitting comfortably mid-table, would he have been sacked? Would we be hearing about all this stuff behind the scenes? Would anyone care much about disagreements over player selection? If not, why even mention any of it?

That’s an absurd question.

Why?

You’re asking if a club getting good results would sack it’s manager, 4 games into the season. It’s like asking if Liverpool hadn’t shipped 5 goals at the weekend would they still have lost? Obviously if things were better then no, regardless of off field events, he’d still have a job.

There’s a few managers in the league who are having various off pitch issues, but while the board are happy enough with results (Wenger) or aren’t in a position to get a better replacement in (Benitez) then they keep their jobs. If either of those get sacked then it’s not just the results which will be the reason why, but all the issues surrounding their tenure.

That’s a bullshit excuse. I can’t think of an example of the top of my head from football, but Isaiah Thomas played in the NBA for the Boston Celtics in a pretty important game the day after his sister passed and scored 33 points.

Clear headspace is important, but if you cannot separate something as silly as that from the game happening on the field, you’re pretty fucking shit at your job as a footballer.

Chelsea in trouble again due to an offensive song including Morata it goes something like “Morata, woah oh oh oh, Morata he hates the yids” now can some one tell me what in the world this song has to be with Morata and not liking Spurs (I presume)? Typcial Chelsea some of the fans are fucking cunts.

Honestly, I think it was the right decision. Couldn’t see it getting any better, especially with their next fixtures. You could easily be sitting there after 8 games with no points.

At least with a new manager, they might get a kick.

I said it earlier, but the “let’s fire the current guy to get the kick and work our way from oblivion into midtable” model is completely unstable and if that’s the sort of club you’re running, there’s a problem there. It’s one thing when you’re a Wigan or a Watford and remaining in the PL is the be-all, end-all for you. If you adopt this model, you either fall down to the Championship, or stay up long enough to become a Sunderland before falling down the leagues.

So keep him and let the atmosphere and results get worse? Going by what DMD said, it’s completely fair. If they have the option of bringing in Roy Hodgson, a proven manager in the Premier League with bags of experience of bringing a team from average to the Europa League final, I think it’s worth a shot.

The questions I’d ask are: if Palace had scored the goals and picked up the points they really should have based on general performance and were sitting comfortably mid-table, would he have been sacked? Would we be hearing about all this stuff behind the scenes? Would anyone care much about disagreements over player selection? If not, why even mention any of it?

If things weren’t so bad behind the scenes, perhaps the players would be in a better head space to score the goals they should be.

If it’s about head space and the players being unable to concentrate, why are they creating all these chances?

CREATING CHANCES DOES NOT WIN FOOTBALL MATCHES. SCORING GOALS WINS FOOTBALL MATCHES. DRIVES FOR SHOW PUTS FOR DOUGH.

That’s a bullshit excuse. I can’t think of an example of the top of my head from football, but Isaiah Thomas played in the NBA for the Boston Celtics in a pretty important game the day after his sister passed and scored 33 points.

Clear headspace is important, but if you cannot separate something as silly as that from the game happening on the field, you’re pretty fucking shit at your job as a footballer.

That’s a bullshit comparison.

Stupid analogies deserve stupid comparisons, but fine.

Suggesting a player can’t put the ball in the back of the net because the board and the manager are having issues is an absolute stretch to try and cover for missing a chance. You can blame the manager for not setting up the team right or imbuing the players with confidence ... etc, but if you’re a striker coming up against a goalkeeper with a chance to score, your mind probably doesn’t wonder away to “Oh, but is old Frankie going to be in the job if I missed?”

If Palace continue their current pattern (that I just made up) for hiring managers, their next 2 managers will be Ronald de Boer and Fabio Capello. Fun times. Followed by… somebody else from the de Boer family, and then Steve McLaren. Not so fun times.

‘Expected goals’ mean fuck all because goals are actually a part of football like a header or a save or a tackle, they aren’t an abstract concept.

Nobody’s denying that, what the fuck are you on about.

It’s part of football to score goals and win games. Players are coached and trained and the team is set up to score more goals than the opposition. If, after four games, you have scored none and let in seven then there is a problem. All teams miss chances, every single one, and every other team apart from Palace so far this season scores them - if the Palace players aren’t calm enough or mentally set to score goals when presented with opportunities, it is a failure of management just like if a team is not set up right on a corner so saying ‘well they looked pretty good on expected goals’ is meaningless.

But that’s exactly the point of such a analytical bit, if you have it telling you that you should really be scoring the chances that you aren’t, then you need to look why, what are the reasons. And like you say there can be issues of form, of anxiety, of the set-up making it that the “wrong” players get at the end of chances instead of the best finishers, and so on. It can be that the coach is doing the right thing, as shown by certain such figures, and that the players will eventually end doing *exactly* what they are supposed to, resulting in performances, which later translate to results when the last details fit together. (That’s how it always is for Bielsa, his teams always start awful for the first couple of months or so.) Other times the team underachieves because the players don’t know what they’re doing do to the coach being clueless, see Pardew, but if you heard Pryia Ramesh saying she thinks de Boer has been clueless since the 2013-14 season, I think she’s spot on. Observation and analysis will help you understand if you’re dealing with the former or the latter, but the stats and analytics being in the red means you need to start doing this, not to irrationally dismiss them.

BTW scoring much less than the quality of your chances should allow IS being in the red, and not a reason to go to sleep serenely. The same with the opposite, scoring much more than you have the “right” to. See Atletico, who scored five against Las Palmas in a game in which they created chances worth a total of 0.8 xG. Such miraculous finishing shouldn’t hide that they really struggled to create this season and the situation is very concerning.

That’s a bullshit excuse. I can’t think of an example of the top of my head from football, but Isaiah Thomas played in the NBA for the Boston Celtics in a pretty important game the day after his sister passed and scored 33 points.

Clear headspace is important, but if you cannot separate something as silly as that from the game happening on the field, you’re pretty fucking shit at your job as a footballer.

That’s a bullshit comparison.

Stupid analogies deserve stupid comparisons, but fine.

Suggesting a player can’t put the ball in the back of the net because the board and the manager are having issues is an absolute stretch to try and cover for missing a chance. You can blame the manager for not setting up the team right or imbuing the players with confidence ... etc, but if you’re a striker coming up against a goalkeeper with a chance to score, your mind probably doesn’t wonder away to “Oh, but is old Frankie going to be in the job if I missed?”

Honestly, I think it was the right decision. Couldn’t see it getting any better, especially with their next fixtures. You could easily be sitting there after 8 games with no points.

At least with a new manager, they might get a kick.

I said it earlier, but the “let’s fire the current guy to get the kick and work our way from oblivion into midtable” model is completely unstable and if that’s the sort of club you’re running, there’s a problem there. It’s one thing when you’re a Wigan or a Watford and remaining in the PL is the be-all, end-all for you. If you adopt this model, you either fall down to the Championship, or stay up long enough to become a Sunderland before falling down the leagues.

So keep him and let the atmosphere and results get worse? Going by what DMD said, it’s completely fair. If they have the option of bringing in Roy Hodgson, a proven manager in the Premier League with bags of experience of bringing a team from average to the Europa League final, I think it’s worth a shot.

I never actually said let the atmosphere get toxic after more terrible results. If they had stuck by him for 5-10 more games and the trend continued and then he got the sack, the board probably would get backlash as to why they let him stay in the job this long and if they’re 9th by the end of the season the “What ifs?” about bringing Hodgson around the 5 games mark would start popping up (as in, “if he was brought in by September could they be pushing for Europe now ...?”).

What I think is a problem is that either De Boer went into this job in completely bad faith (was planning to play in a style completely different to what he said he’d do in the interview and that sort of behavior), which is possible but seems very unreasonable, but if so the board had every right to have fired him as early as the first game of the season. Or, someone fucked up by not doing their due diligence on FDB ahead of recruiting him and now panicked and decided this is not what they wanted, which if this is the scenario, this person has got to get fired because you made the mistake, not De Boer.

That’s a bullshit excuse. I can’t think of an example of the top of my head from football, but Isaiah Thomas played in the NBA for the Boston Celtics in a pretty important game the day after his sister passed and scored 33 points.

Clear headspace is important, but if you cannot separate something as silly as that from the game happening on the field, you’re pretty fucking shit at your job as a footballer.

That’s a bullshit comparison.

Stupid analogies deserve stupid comparisons, but fine.

Suggesting a player can’t put the ball in the back of the net because the board and the manager are having issues is an absolute stretch to try and cover for missing a chance. You can blame the manager for not setting up the team right or imbuing the players with confidence ... etc, but if you’re a striker coming up against a goalkeeper with a chance to score, your mind probably doesn’t wonder away to “Oh, but is old Frankie going to be in the job if I missed?”

You’re spectacularly misunderstanding sports psychology.

Not really.

I understand that being under incredible amounts of stress can result in absurd mistakes, but there’s also the element that sports people at that level are able to compartmentalize things happening around them.

I really don’t get this sudden interest in “expected goals”. You wouldn’t look at the goals you concede and write them off saying that the defenders should be expected to have cleared the ball, or made the tackle, so instead of losing 3-0, we should have drawn. Why should managers get leeway if it’s the strikers making the mistakes?

But every coach deserves some space to work out his style and magic. I can’t believe Palace, a team known in the last few years for defensive, rugged, counter attacking football deciding they want to switch away from that style, and then expect it to happen in under 3 months.

Hmm, I thought I remember you in the “it’s right to fire Ranieri” camp back when debated that?...

Anyway, the discussion is never about how much time a manager *deserves* to have in order to be able to show he’s going to successfully rebuilt a team’s identity and playing style, but about how much time the manager actually has. And the answer is that in the case of a club such as Palace the time is objectively very short. Palace have to not get relegated at the end of the season. Usually, the bottom club get to know if their manager can save them by winter, the latest. Those clubs that stay all season in the relegation battle without being “already dead” change the manager by spring the latest. And when the mismatch between club and coach is so utterly and painfully obvious, with the situation being dramatic and the damage inflicted so strong that the club finds itself in a worse state than before and in great danger of missing its most vital objective, then the right thing to do is to act as quickly as possible. For Palace it may even be too late already, with the mention that I believe that management responsabilities were in fact split at least in what recruitment is concerned. This is not Bielsa’s Lille, who if they have a catastrophic season are going to end 15th because of how big a club they are anyway.

Suggesting a player can’t put the ball in the back of the net because the board and the manager are having issues is an absolute stretch to try and cover for missing a chance.

WHO THE FUCK SAID THIS?

DMD - 12 September 2017 12:35 PM

If things weren’t so bad behind the scenes, perhaps the players would be in a better head space to score the goals they should be.

Did I misunderstand this or something?

Yes you did. Behind the scenes includes everything we cannot see on the football pitch, you just extrapolated that to mean the boardroom for some reason.

Well, I’m sorry I extrapolated the thing that has been circulated the most as being the problem by the media, it’s a very difficult connection to make.

You’re making it out that when teams who are fighting relegation or are under kosh for some reason have it fine and dandy. Well, excuse the stickman argument, but it’s closer to a burning house than candy land. It’s usually incredibly shit backstage yet players find a way to perform and pull themselves out of these situations.

Let’s assume Palace are doing everything that is expected of them and the only thing that’s not going for them is scoring goals. That’s happened before for teams, you do everything right but the goals aren’t coming. Let’s just assume for a moment De Boer is setting them up correctly to be in these positions and put the ball in the net, is he to blame if they cock up chances? It’s one thing if his managerial style finds players 20 yards out and they’re expected to smash long rangers in order to score, but if he’s getting them in positions to score, and they don’t, the consensus is almost always that the player fucked up.

Now, if he’s not doing that, if he’s not setting them up correctly, if there’s a general discontent with him by the collective of the players and they’re generally finding it shit to play under him, then that probably contributes to them fucking up these goals. Now, I should have prefaced all of this arguing by stating I haven’t seen Palace play this season and I don’t know if those were on the line chances they were fucking up or not, but the way it’s been described to me by the internet is that they have missed chances that as top division players, they should be putting away. So I find it very hard to pin the blame on the manager in these situations.

But every coach deserves some space to work out his style and magic. I can’t believe Palace, a team known in the last few years for defensive, rugged, counter attacking football deciding they want to switch away from that style, and then expect it to happen in under 3 months.

Hmm, I thought I remember you in the “it’s right to fire Ranieri” camp back when debated that?...

Anyway, the discussion is never about how much time a manager *deserves* to have in order to be able to show he’s going to successfully rebuilt a team’s identity and playing style, but about how much time the manager actually has. And the answer is that in the case of a club such as Palace the time is objectively very short. Palace have to not get relegated at the end of the season. Usually, the bottom club get to know if their manager can save them by winter, the latest. Those clubs that stay all season in the relegation battle without being “already dead” change the manager by spring the latest. And when the mismatch between club and coach is so utterly and painfully obvious, with the situation being dramatic and the damage inflicted so strong that the club finds itself in a worse state than before and in great danger of missing its most vital objective, then the right thing to do is to act as quickly as possible. For Palace it may even be too late already, with the mention that I believe that management responsabilities were in fact split at least in what recruitment is concerned. This is not Bielsa’s Lille, who if they have a catastrophic season are going to end 15th because of how big a club they are anyway.

Not really. I was very sentimental about it and thought it was the wrong call at the moment.

Hindsight 20/20, I was obviously wrong.

I think I’ve come off as entirely pro-De Boer in this discussion and probably should make it clear that I just think more heads should roll. If De Boer was a mismatch and the board knew that going in, someone fucked up.

BBC started displaying it on Match Of The Day this season, which brought them to the attention of a lot of people who weren’t previously exposed. But you know that if BBC has finally adopted something, then it must have been going on for a while. Myself I remember starting to notice the notion half a decade ago, as I was following more traditional tactics writers like Michael Cox or Jonathan Wilson.

AUFC Rick - 12 September 2017 01:19 PM

You wouldn’t look at the goals you concede and write them off saying that the defenders should be expected to have cleared the ball, or made the tackle, so instead of losing 3-0, we should have drawn. Why should managers get leeway if it’s the strikers making the mistakes?

That’s a spectacular misunderstanding of expected goals.

From a defensive point of view, coaching gets credit when the team makes it that the opposition only get poor quality chances. Like for example when you defend with a deep tight block and force the opponent into many long distance shots. That’s not to say that the opposition can’t eventually put one in from range, but even if that happens, it was still a good game plan.

Suggesting a player can’t put the ball in the back of the net because the board and the manager are having issues is an absolute stretch to try and cover for missing a chance.

WHO THE FUCK SAID THIS?

DMD - 12 September 2017 12:35 PM

If things weren’t so bad behind the scenes, perhaps the players would be in a better head space to score the goals they should be.

Did I misunderstand this or something?

Yes you did. Behind the scenes includes everything we cannot see on the football pitch, you just extrapolated that to mean the boardroom for some reason.

Well, I’m sorry I extrapolated the thing that has been circulated the most as being the problem by the media, it’s a very difficult connection to make.

You’re making it out that when teams who are fighting relegation or are under kosh for some reason have it fine and dandy. Well, excuse the stickman argument, but it’s closer to a burning house than candy land. It’s usually incredibly shit backstage yet players find a way to perform and pull themselves out of these situations.

Let’s assume Palace are doing everything that is expected of them and the only thing that’s not going for them is scoring goals. That’s happened before for teams, you do everything right but the goals aren’t coming. Let’s just assume for a moment De Boer is setting them up correctly to be in these positions and put the ball in the net, is he to blame if they cock up chances? It’s one thing if his managerial style finds players 20 yards out and they’re expected to smash long rangers in order to score, but if he’s getting them in positions to score, and they don’t, the consensus is almost always that the player fucked up.

Now, if he’s not doing that, if he’s not setting them up correctly, if there’s a general discontent with him by the collective of the players and they’re generally finding it shit to play under him, then that probably contributes to them fucking up these goals. Now, I should have prefaced all of this arguing by stating I haven’t seen Palace play this season and I don’t know if those were on the line chances they were fucking up or not, but the way it’s been described to me by the internet is that they have missed chances that as top division players, they should be putting away. So I find it very hard to pin the blame on the manager in these situations.

Why are players from all over the team, over four games, from defenders to forwards, unable to put the ball in the net despite being presented with good chances?

That’s a bullshit excuse. I can’t think of an example of the top of my head from football, but Isaiah Thomas played in the NBA for the Boston Celtics in a pretty important game the day after his sister passed and scored 33 points.

Clear headspace is important, but if you cannot separate something as silly as that from the game happening on the field, you’re pretty fucking shit at your job as a footballer.

That’s a bullshit comparison.

Stupid analogies deserve stupid comparisons, but fine.

Suggesting a player can’t put the ball in the back of the net because the board and the manager are having issues is an absolute stretch to try and cover for missing a chance. You can blame the manager for not setting up the team right or imbuing the players with confidence ... etc, but if you’re a striker coming up against a goalkeeper with a chance to score, your mind probably doesn’t wonder away to “Oh, but is old Frankie going to be in the job if I missed?”

You’re spectacularly misunderstanding sports psychology.

Not really.

I understand that being under incredible amounts of stress can result in absurd mistakes, but there’s also the element that sports people at that level are able to compartmentalize things happening around them.

There’s no such thing as ‘sports people’ as if all sports people have a hive mind or think the same way by virtue of them being good at a sport. Just because one person can play well after his sister has died doesn’t mean any other person can play well though any other type of difficultly, regardless of how we perceive it to trivial or important.

Benteke is terrible at 1 on 1’s while he’s great a headers and other goals where he only needs one or two touches. That would suggest has issues when he has time to think. Should he go left or right, etc. Too much self doubt. If you add on the weight of being the principal scorer in a side which is losing and not scoring while you know your manager is under pressure then he’s not likely to score anytime soon.

BBC started displaying it on Match Of The Day this season, which brought them to the attention of a lot of people who weren’t previously exposed. But you know that if BBC has finally adopted something, then it must have been going on for a while. Myself I remember starting to notice the notion half a decade ago, as I was following more traditional tactics writers like Michael Cox or Jonathan Wilson.

AUFC Rick - 12 September 2017 01:19 PM

You wouldn’t look at the goals you concede and write them off saying that the defenders should be expected to have cleared the ball, or made the tackle, so instead of losing 3-0, we should have drawn. Why should managers get leeway if it’s the strikers making the mistakes?

That’s a spectacular misunderstanding of expected goals.

From a defensive point of view, coaching gets credit when the team makes it that the opposition only get poor quality chances. Like for example when you defend with a deep tight block and force the opponent into many long distance shots. That’s not to say that the opposition can’t eventually put one in from range, but even if that happens, it was still a good game plan.

Maybe so.

But, I just don’t get the whole argument that you can’t blame the manager if a team doesn’t put the ball in the net in 4 games with lots of good chances. Yes, some of that may be purely down to bad luck, but there also has to be an element of bad selection, tactics, etc.

If your defenders & Midfielders are constantly making mistakes, mistiming tackles, misplacing passes, etc, leading to losses, people point fingers at the manager / coaching.

Why is that not the case with strikers when they make the mistakes by not putting away chances?

People are treating it like strikers are randomly placed with a team each matchday & that the manager / club can have no influence on how they perform.

I really don’t get this sudden interest in “expected goals”. You wouldn’t look at the goals you concede and write them off saying that the defenders should be expected to have cleared the ball, or made the tackle, so instead of losing 3-0, we should have drawn. Why should managers get leeway if it’s the strikers making the mistakes?

I can see it now: ‘That Reece Oxford, I don’t think he’s up to much this season… just look at his expected tackles and expected blocks, all flash and no substance…’

I really don’t get this sudden interest in “expected goals”. You wouldn’t look at the goals you concede and write them off saying that the defenders should be expected to have cleared the ball, or made the tackle, so instead of losing 3-0, we should have drawn. Why should managers get leeway if it’s the strikers making the mistakes?

I can see it now: ‘That Reece Oxford, I don’t think he’s up to much this season… just look at his expected tackles and expected blocks, all flash and no substance…’

Derby were unlucky to go down in 2008, I mean yeah, they finished with 11 points & a -69 goal difference, but their defense should have stopped 32 goals & they were mid table, in the expected goals league. You can’t blame the manager.

Random observation: De Boer’s third title-winning Ajax side were outscored by PSV to the tune of 20 goals (83 vs 103). His final title-winning side were outscored by a trio of Feyenoord, Twente and Heerenveen.

But, I just don’t get the whole argument that you can’t blame the manager if a team doesn’t put the ball in the net in 4 games with lots of good chances. Yes, some of that may be purely down to bad luck, but there also has to be an element of bad selection, tactics, etc.

If your defenders & Midfielders are constantly making mistakes, mistiming tackles, misplacing passes, etc, leading to losses, people point fingers at the manager / coaching.

Why is that not the case with strikers when they make the mistakes by not putting away chances?

People are treating it like strikers are randomly placed with a team each matchday & that the manager / club can have no influence on how they perform.

I agree. Talk of good / bad luck can happen for shorter sample sizes, when something persists then it is systemic. For example, if you remember Liverpool during the last Kenny Dalglish managerial spell, they were playing largely well but were missing a lot of chances, and I think they broke the record for the number of bars/posts hit during a season (thirty-something times, maybe?) If I recall well, the eventual consensus between tactics writers was that Liverpool were taking a lot shots a tiny bit too early when they should instead have developed the plays a bit more in order to get into better positions.

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